


all my love was down (in a frozen ground)

by penelopes



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Trying to Cope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-12
Updated: 2014-12-12
Packaged: 2018-03-01 05:09:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2760836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/penelopes/pseuds/penelopes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Oliver leaves, all Felicity can think is <em>I love you too. I love you, I love you, I love you.</em> She doesn’t think <em>don’t go</em> because she knows better. She’s stronger and better and smarter than she was before, she <em>knows</em> better than to ask for something she’ll never receive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all my love was down (in a frozen ground)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from re: stacks by Bon Iver.
> 
> I don't own anything.

When Oliver leaves, all Felicity can think is _I love you too. I love you, I love you, I love you._ She doesn't think _don’t go_ because she knows better. She’s stronger and better and smarter than she was before, she _knows_ better than to ask for something she’ll never receive.

 

She gives herself a minute, just one, to wipe under and at the corners of her eyes before she takes one deep, shaky breath, grabs her purse, and leaves the foundry.

 

-

 

She dreams of him after he’s gone. That night in her bed, it’s a fitful sleep. She dreams of his hands -- Oliver taking her apart with them. His hands are made for work, for fighting, for bending things to his will. He takes things in his hands -- calloused, rough -- and breaks them. Breaks them just a little because he’s different now. He says he’s different. So, he takes things, people, in his hands and he breaks them a little before putting them back together. He uses his hands to stop madness and disaster, a pause, and he puts things back together.

 

Felicity dreams of Oliver taking her in his hands and breaking her apart; she dreams of him pulling at her strings until she’s unravelled in his hand. Her hair undone, matted with sweat to the back of her head, her mouth open on a gasp -- a frightful one that shakes her to her bones. His fingers and his mouth, his tongue, his teeth between her legs taking her apart until she’s clenching her own hands in his hair. Her fingers tangled in the soft spikes at the crown of his head, her thighs clenching around his head so tightly she can feel the nails of his left hand biting into the soft, pale skin of her thigh.

 

When she wakes with a start, she’s covered in a light film of sweat and her thighs ache, tender to the touch.

 

She tries to reconcile her dream with a rough day; a tiring, disastrous day. Her mind’s a little buggered, her heart a little hurt. She’ll be fine, probably, she’s got Important Stuff to do, work stuff, stuff that doesn’t involve Team Arrow.

 

She gets out of bed twenty-six minutes before her alarm, scared that if she stays under the covers any longer she won’t ever get back out.

 

She showers quickly, finishing herself off with practiced ease, doesn’t think about anything or anyone. And after she’s showered, she brushes her teeth while humming along to whatever song’s playing when her alarm finally goes off.

 

She has a long day ahead of her -- fixing every problem the IT department causes, not bringing anyone coffee because it is _not_ her job, she has an office now, and drafting plans for Ray to look at when she sends him home early. He’s just like Oliver in that, isn’t he, working late and not taking care of himself. Her chest feels a bit tight when she thinks that, but she pushes through. She’s Felicity Smoak, she won’t cry about it at work. Hopefully, not at all.

Hopefully, she thinks stupidly, Oliver will be home soon. She’ll walk in Verdant and find him leaning against the bar talking to Thea about how her Christmas decorations are a bit shit.

 

Stupid, _stupid_ girl, she thinks, pocketing her cell phone as she leaves for work.

 

-

 

Two days, three. Four days, five. So on and so on. She’s beginning to lose any of the little hope she has.

 

She’s sitting idly in her chair in the foundry absently clicking the end of a pen, when Diggle and Roy walk in.

 

“Got ‘im?” She asks, chin propped up on the heel of her hand. She’s bone-tired and can’t be bothered to care as much as she should. She needs to get it together, they’ve got a city to save, don’t they. Crime doesn’t stop just because Oliver isn’t here anymore.

 

“Yeah,” Roy replies hanging up his bow. Felicity knows he’s taking it hard too, Oliver being gone. He is his mentor; Oliver picked Roy up when no one wanted him, when Roy didn’t even think he was worth saving. _Is or was_ , she thinks. _Past or present?_ Her throat feels a little tight.

 

She tries to shake it off, nonchalant as anything, “An arrow to the knee, yeah?” She manages a little smirk. Small victories and all that.

 

Or, not.

 

Diggle sighs, places his hands on either of her shoulders, and squeezes. “You okay?” He asks in that way he does. Diggle’s hurting too, he misses Oliver too. She _knows_ it, but she doesn’t know how he stands here infinitely wiser than her.

 

“Great,” she says, feigning a smile. It’s futile, they know her. “Starling City isn’t going to save itself, now is it?”

 

And that’s that. They do know her -- enough to let things go even when she doesn’t have to ask.

 

-

 

She wonders if the League was supposed to send word. A _Your ring leader’s dead. He tried valiantly, but his attempts were futile. Our deepest regrets._ Or, you know, anything at all.

 

Maybe, she thinks, maybe this is it. The long morrow. The finish line is eight meters ahead and she’s running in place. Groundhog Day where they all have to relive the worst day. A nightmare she won’t wake up from.

It’s been days and days and days, and she’s _tired_.

 

-

 

She doesn’t dream of him again, not really. And if she does, she doesn’t remember. Her sleep is fucked; she tosses and turns and watches episodes of the _Twilight Zone_ until her eyes are burning. She sleeps an hour here, three there.

 

She’s exhausted when she wakes up, drags herself to the shower, then to the kitchen for a cup of black coffee, and off to work.

 

It’s a routine now. A new, boring routine. She’s learned to adapt. She’s always learned to adapt. She just didn’t know it would be this hard.

 

-

 

Sometimes she lets herself sit and stew. She’s been keeping herself so busy, she hasn’t had any time to think. She hasn’t let herself sit and think _Oliver’s gone._ The words taste bad in her mouth now, foreign.

 

Oliver has always been there. _Always_. And now.

 

Now, she sits at the desk overlooking the decrepit alleyway outside her apartment. She can see the rest of Starling over the lip of the building across her way -- just a little. She feels a world away; she feels like everything is just at her fingertips, but she can’t ever reach it. Here, she’s sat in the silence of her apartment eating from a box of Chinese takeaway waiting for something to happen.

 

She hasn’t been in silence for so long. There’s always the TV, or a Skype call with her mom, or Roy and Diggle strategizing in the foundry. She’s got time to think now, and no appetite.

 

Her chicken fried rice is growing cold in front of her and it’s a shame -- it’s her favorite. But, she can’t eat, she can hardly sleep, she’s making herself sick. This is not who she is. She tried so hard to push it all away, to be the strong woman she’s learned to become.

 

But here she is, a lump in her throat the size of her heart, tears in the corners of her eyes --

 

The thing is: she misses him. God, she misses Oliver desperately, down to the tips of her toes. And sometimes. Sometimes, she thinks they could have had it all.

 

Had they met in another life, she thinks they could’ve been good for each other. _You’re good now. You’d be good in this life_ , she thinks momentarily before shutting that thought down. No. This wasn’t meant for them. Felicity was only meant to get parts of Oliver and even those, those she had to give back when he went to the top of a fucking mountain.

 

She doesn’t get wholes in this life. She gets halves and quarters. She doesn’t get Oliver Queen. She gets the dread, the sadness, she gets the life without him.

 

They could’ve had it all. Breakfast early on Sunday mornings at her apartment, knees knocking together under her kitchen table. He’d smile and wrap his foot around her ankle then steal her eggs.

 

That would have been enough, probably. And now, she’s got nothing. Literally. It’s like she’s grasping at straws.

 

-

 

Felicity’s got a routine down. It’s boring, but she has a job she loves and she’s helping the people she loves, and she goes to Verdant sometimes to chat to Thea.

 

Oliver is off on one of his excursion, Thea thinks. Felicity wonders who’s going to be the one to tell her Oliver’s….gone. It sure as hell won’t be her. Roy probably, he’s always been good with Thea.

 

When she’s not working, or saving the city, or visiting Verdant, she sits in her apartment and watches shit TV and doesn’t think about how one second she had a little hope, a little chance, and the next it was walking away from her.

 

That’s the thing, isn’t it: you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Or something.

  
Felicity switches off the TV and drags herself to bed. The other thing, though? She’d known all along.


End file.
